by Mike Markel
“Wait a second.” Ryan was rubbing his forehead. “I buy that Weber coached Reid on the story, but I don’t know what Weber said to Reid first.”
“What do you mean?”
“Did Weber say, ‘I killed Cory and dropped his body at the site, and I want you to know what happened’? Or did Weber say, ‘We’re working on a misdirection play and I want you to understand it’? One of the other guys killed Cory and dropped him at the site, then Weber drove past the construction manager’s trailer when he knew the manager was there eating lunch. That way, the police will like Weber but they’ll never be able to arrest him because they can’t collect any forensics because he didn’t do it. Nobody will be charged, and the case will go cold.”
“It’s the misdirection,” I said.
“How do you know?”
“Because a criminal attorney never wants his client to admit he’s guilty. That’s for a judge or jury to decide. The attorney simply wants to mount the best defense he can.”
“But an attorney isn’t permitted to argue facts he knows to be inaccurate,” Ryan said.
“That’s why this is a good misdirection. Weber says—truthfully—that he didn’t kill Cory but admits he was driving past the manager’s trailer on the way to talk to his employees. The lawyer says to him, ‘You didn’t kill Cory McDermott, and you didn’t drop his body at the construction site, right?” Weber says, ‘Right.’ The lawyer doesn’t say, ‘Okay, then, who did kill him—’”
“Because that’s for us to find out,” Ryan said. “Christopher Reid is working for Ronald Weber, and if Weber said he didn’t do it, that’s good enough—legally and ethically—for the attorney.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Now, I wouldn’t be surprised if Weber—alone or with some of his buddies—filled the attorney in on the plan, but as long as nobody literally says, ‘I killed Cory,’ the attorney is free to mount the defense—and charge them four-hundred bucks an hour.”
“So what next?”
“If this is a misdirection, the only way we’re gonna figure it out is with forensics.”
Ryan nodded, and we left the interview room to see if Harold or Robin had anything for us. Robin’s door was open.
“Tell us something good, Robin.”
She looked up at me. “You’re asking me to make something up?”
“Shit.”
“Cory McDermott had nothing on or in his clothing that can help us. He didn’t have an ID or a wallet. There was nothing on the outside of his jacket—no organics or particles—that you couldn’t explain by looking at where he was lying. He had some wood fibers that matched the lumber right next to him, and some concrete dust that was all over the surface of the materials-storage area. But there were no defensive wounds on him, no tissue under his nails, no prints on his neck from the killer. The killer didn’t seem to break a sweat in getting behind him and strangling him.”
“You didn’t find a ligature?”
“Like a three-foot length of electrical cord with the words Property of Weber Electric and the vic’s DNA and the killer’s prints?” She waited a second for me to respond. Then she said, “No, I didn’t.”
“Did you think to call the hospital and get a list of his injuries from the beatdown the other day?”
Robin winced. “That’s a great idea. You mean, to see if there were any new injuries that might tell us something?”
“Yeah, that’s what I mean. Did you think to do that?” My tone came out a little nastier than I intended. It was late Friday.
She smiled. “Actually, I did. There wasn’t anything new, except for the ligature marks and the related blood vessels.”
“All right, Robin. I appreciate you staying late.”
“If an older person like yourself can stay late, I can, too.”
I squeezed her shoulder. “You’re the daughter I’m glad I never had.”
Ryan and I headed down the hall to Harold’s lab. It was cold, smelly, and noisy. Harold was leaning over Cory’s body. I turned to Ryan. “Go over and talk to Harold, would you?”
The medical examiner looked up when Ryan walked up next to him.
“You didn’t have to do this now,” Ryan said.
“Well, you and Karen are producing bodies so fast, I thought I’d do this one now. You know, so I’m ready when you bring me the next one Monday morning.”
“I think this one should be it,” Ryan said.
“That would be nice.” Harold wiped the perspiration off his scalp with his sleeve.
“Anything for us yet?”
“I took the blood, the stomach fluids, and the urine and put a rush on them. I don’t see any signs that he was drinking. The tox results should be ready by Monday. I just thought I’d take a quick look at his throat.”
“And?”
“You’re how old?”
“Thirty.”
“That’s when the two halves of your hyoid bone fuse.”
“What does that tell you?”
“If your hyoid bone is broken, that’s the obvious sign of ligature strangulation. But since Mr. McDermott’s hyoid bone wasn’t yet fused, the strangulation didn’t break it.”
“Are you saying he wasn’t strangled?”
“Oh, no, he absolutely was. I can’t say if that killed him—he might have had a heart attack or a stroke five minutes before he was strangled—but someone definitely strangled him. There’s a lot of trauma to his windpipe. And the bruising around the ligature marks shows he was alive when he was strangled.”
“Okay,” Ryan said, “then we’ve got at least attempted murder.”
“Yes, we do. Once I rule out drugs or coronary issues or a stroke, I can call it officially. But for now, you and Karen should be looking for someone who wanted to kill him, twisted a ligature around his neck, and yanked it hard and held it tight for a while.”
“You’ll let us know if it’s one of those other things, right?”
“I’ll let you know either way.”
“And that information about the hyoid bone fusing at age thirty?”
“That was just a gift for you. Because I knew you’re approximately that age and you’re curious about things like that.” He turned his head to face me. “Unlike your squeamish partner.”
“Thank you for not giving me any gifts, Harold.” I waved from the other side of the room.
“I could tell you a lot of interesting things about your body. You’re in your mid-forties, am I correct?”
“We’re in kind of a hurry. I’ll stop back when I’m in my mid-fifties, Harold.”
Ryan and I headed upstairs to the detectives’ bullpen and sat down at our desks. It was five-thirty.
“Think we should call the chief?” Ryan said.
I thought for a moment. “What have we got? Ron Weber says he’s innocent but isn’t telling us who’s guilty, right?”
“And Cory was strangled.”
I shook my head. “That’s not enough. We don’t have any decent forensics. We can’t arrest anyone. There’s not even enough to hold anyone. So what do we tell him?”
“Ronald Weber has told us—twice—that he delivered illegal drugs to players and recruits. Is that something we should tell President Billingham?”
“I’m not sure there’s anything to tell yet,” I said. “We don’t have specifics, so we can’t charge Weber. And even though it’s hard to believe the A.D. and the coach didn’t know this was going on, until we have evidence they did know, we can’t move against any of them.”
“In other words, all of this can wait until Monday?”
“I think so. What is the chief going to do this weekend to move the case along? What is President Billingham going to do this weekend about his A.D. and his coach?”
“Okay.” Ryan smiled as he walked over to the coat rack. “This is working out better than I thought.” He slipped into his coat. “See you Monday, Karen.”
“Yeah, see you.” I watched him leave. I was the only person left in the big room. The two
second-shift detectives were around somewhere, but they weren’t here. There were no admins, no uniforms. There were no phones ringing, no printers humming. I walked into the break room. There was no coffee left in the pot, which someone had turned off but not cleaned. There were no donuts or pastries left in the boxes.
Ryan was on his way home to his wife, Cali, their two infants and the newborn. The chief was … I didn’t know where the chief was. When he first came to Rawlings, almost three years ago, he lived in a residential hotel down near the airport. But I didn’t know if he ever got an apartment or bought a house. I realized that I had never asked him, not even in a casual, polite way. I had never offered to help, never shown any interest.
I drifted down to the incident room. Abrams and Wilkerson, the second-shift guys, were in there, looking at a big map of the city stuck to a corkboard. Abrams was pushing some pins in it as the two of them talked. They looked up when they saw me.
Wilkerson said, “I hear that Williams case—the junkie?—turned into a real sack of shit.” He gave me a sympathetic frown.
“No big deal. Just three bodies this week.”
“Three? I thought it was two.”
“Third one this afternoon. The dealer who supplied the drugs that killed Williams.”
“I’m sorry,” Abrams said.
“Not your fault.” I smiled. “Think of it as job security.”
“Sounds like it.” He nodded. “Is there something we can help you with?”
“No, sorry to interrupt. I’ll let you guys get back to it.”
I headed to the bullpen, grabbed my jacket, and headed home. It wasn’t yet six o’clock. I cut open a bag of frozen chicken carbonara, tossed it in a casserole dish, and nuked it. I watched the timer count off the eight minutes, then slid the dish onto a plastic cutting board and carried it out to the TV tray set up in front of my chair. I turned on the TV and skipped through the channels. I stopped at one of my favorite cooking shows. It was an old French guy. He had some dish in the oven, and three other things on the burners of an enormous stove.
Around seven-thirty I headed out to my AA class. A bunch of people greeted me in their gentle, busted-up way. Most of them called me by name. I didn’t remember any of their names, even though I’d been coming to this meeting, seven days a week, for more than a year, and seen the same people almost every night. As usual, I didn’t say anything during the session, didn’t talk to anyone during the little break, didn’t stay for coffee at the end.
I was changing into sweats a little after nine when my cell rang. The screen said “Murtaugh, Robert.”
“Hey, Chief.” He never calls me at home—unless I’m supposed to be at work.
“Hi, Karen. This is Robert Murtaugh.”
“Yeah, my phone tells me that. Is everything okay?”
“Yes, everything is fine. Hope I’m not disturbing you calling this late. I know sometimes you go to an eight-o’clock meeting.”
“No, you’re not disturbing me. I got back a few minutes ago.”
“I just wanted to see how things went in the interview with Ronald Weber.”
“Yeah, Ryan and I discussed whether we should call you but decided it could wait until Monday.” I filled him in on what had happened. “So we didn’t think we could charge Weber, and we didn’t think we had enough to bring to President Billingham.”
“You’re probably right.” He was silent a moment. I was about to say something when he spoke again. “Karen, I should have said something to you at headquarters. I should have.” He was silent again.
This didn’t sound like it was going to be good news. “What is it, Chief?”
“I just want you to know that I’m aware of how hard you’re working … I mean, with the AA. I feel bad that I threatened you—when you came back to the department—about how you had to do the AA or you were gone. You’re an adult … a responsible adult. You’ve proven that. I want you to know that, Karen. I’m proud of you. Of what you’ve done.”
The tears rolled down my cheeks as I struggled to clear my throat quietly. “You did the right thing, Chief. I’d have been dead by now. I needed to do the AA. You knew that. And I needed to work again, too. That was you taking a chance on me. You saved my life, Chief.”
The line was silent a moment. “I’ll see you Monday, Karen.”
“Thanks for calling, sir.”
I knew right away that the chief hadn’t really called to find out how things went in the interview with Ronald Weber. But it wasn’t until a couple of days later that I realized he hadn’t called to talk about AA, either.
Chapter 29
It was a little after eight on Saturday morning when I got a call from Chief Murtaugh. “I’d like to see you and Ryan in my office, please. Thirty minutes?”
“Sure, okay. Want me to call Ryan?”
“No, I’ve got it.”
“See you soon.”
A half-hour later, Ryan and I were in the chief’s office.
“Sit, please,” the chief said. No small talk. No “Sorry to drag you in on Saturday.”
“What’s up?” I said.
“Just got a call from President Billingham. Early this morning, Ronald Weber was in a car accident. He’s badly injured, but he’ll live. It was a DUI. BAC of one point six.”
That’s twice the legal limit. “Sorry to hear that,” I said.
“Chief,” Ryan said, “why is the university president calling you about a car accident?”
“Because his A.D., his football coach, and the president of the booster organization said Weber told them that we’re harassing him. Weber is talking. He said we’re accusing him of three murders, and that’s why he got drunk and got in an accident.”
“Come on,” I said. “That’s bullshit. Weber came in on his own—with an attorney from Billings, by the way—and admitted he’s been supplying drugs and girls to players and recruits for seven years. Did he mention that?”
The chief held his gaze but did not respond.
“Sure, we ran a theory by them,” I said. “Weber and his lawyer wanted to know why we were looking at them, so I told them why we think Lake Williams and Kendra Crimmons and Cory McDermott are all the same case, and we think the football guys are in on it. But that’s what happens in an interview room. You know that. Especially when the suspect walks in with a criminal attorney. But I’m not taking responsibility for Weber deciding to get drunk and crash his car. That’s him, not me.”
“Nobody’s accusing you of anything, Karen—”
“Sounds like President Billingham is.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything. But President Billingham asked if we could brief him on the case. He’s got himself a serious personnel problem, with his two biggest athletic staff members and the booster demanding to know what’s going on. What I’d like to do is sit down with him and present our side of the story.”
“I don’t think we should back off a murder investigation because he’s got a personnel problem.”
“I’ll repeat what I said, Karen: We’re going to present our side of the story. We are not going to back off the investigation. President Billingham will be right here …” He looked at his watch. “In fifteen minutes. If you two want to be present, you’re invited. If you don’t want to be here—whatever reason—I can handle it myself. Your choice.”
I looked at Ryan. He nodded. “We’ll be here.”
“You understand the ground rules. He asked to be briefed. We’re going to brief him. He’s going to be a professional. We’re going to be professionals.” The chief looked at me, then at Ryan.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Fifteen minutes.”
The chief looked at his watch. “Good. Dismissed.”
Ryan and I headed back to the bullpen.
“What the fuck?” I said.
Ryan sighed. “That question’s a little too open-ended. Can you narrow it a little?”
“I get it, Ryan. You went to college.”
“You went to college,
too. Karen. We’ve been working this case for a week now, and despite the fact that we’ve got three vics—”
“I didn’t pour the booze down Weber’s throat and hand him the car keys.”
“Yeah, I think everyone realizes that. What I was saying is, we’ve done good work on this case. We don’t want to jeopardize it by losing our composure in front of the university president—and in front of the chief. So if you want to be pissed off, could you do it in the next fourteen minutes?”
“Can I call you an asshole?”
“Why should this morning be any different?”
“You know, you can be an asshole.” I smiled. “Okay, I get your point. I’ll behave.”
“The way I look at it, this meeting with Billingham just confirms our theory of the case. They’re working together. The fact that they went to Billingham as a group tells me they’re connected with Weber—”
“And they’ve been doing some bad shit.”
“Exactly,” Ryan said. “If Weber were the only bad actor, they’d have cut him loose. But they’re going to bat for him—a guy they know has just admitted he commits felonies for them? What does that say to you?”
“Two things,” I said. “They know what he’s been doing, and they know that if they don’t protect him, he’ll flip on them.”
“That’s the way I see it, too. I don’t know which one of them killed the three—and we don’t have the evidence to charge any of them with murder—”
“Yet,” I said.
“I’d be more comfortable if we leave off the ‘yet’—especially when we talk to President Billingham. But it’s fairly obvious they’re worried about their careers. And that’s a point that might interest him.”
Ryan and I spent the next few minutes at our desks, looking over our notebooks but not saying anything. Then we walked to the chief’s office and sat in the waiting area where Margaret usually sits. The chief’s door was closed.
A minute later, the door opened and the chief invited us in. President Billingham wasn’t there yet, and the three of us sat down to wait. Soon he arrived and we shook hands. We sat in the soft chairs arranged around a coffee table.